Angeles, General Felipe, Jr.

Born in Molango, Hidalgo in 1869, the son of Colonel
Felipe Angeles and Juana Ramírez. In 1883, the able student entered the Colegio
Militar de Chapultepec with a government scholarship given because of his
father's service to the government of Porfirio
Díaz. Beginning in 1904, the
young officer was given important jobs outside the country, one of which was a
study commission to the United States to study the manufacture of smokeless
gunpowder. When the Mexican Revolution began in the Fall of 1910. Angeles,
who was in Paris, asked to return to Mexico to participate in the fight against
the revolutionaries. Instead, he was sent to Germany. When Francisco I. Madero
and the revolutionaries, Madero brought Angeles back to Mexico, making him a
brigadier general in charge of an artillery unit and sending him to pacify the
state of México. Madero contemplated putting him in charge of the army but
decided, upon the advice of associates, to give the job to General Victoriano
Huerta. When Madero was assassinated in 1913 on Huerta's orders, Angeles was in
Hermosillo, Sonora; unlike many other generals, he had no political ambitions.
Initially, he was a loyal soldier and obeyed Huerta but defected and joined the
forces of Pancho
Villa. He was Villa's ablest commander.